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“The challenge, and I’m not picking on reporters, about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on and those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it,” he said during questioning from Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho).

“And we don’t call the press and say, ‘Hey, you got that thing wrong.’ ”

The supposed Feb. 14 scoop said that members of Trump’s campaign staff had repeated contact with “senior Russian intelligence officials.”

The story cited as sources four current and former US officials, who cited “phone records” and “intercepted calls” as sources.

The story said there was no evidence of collusion, but that US officials were “alarmed” because the alleged contacts came at the same time that Trump was figuratively blowing kisses to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The story fingered Trump’s onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort as one of the officials — a charge he called absurd at the time.

The White House went ballistic after the story broke, with chief of staff Reince Priebus telling “Fox News Sunday” that top intelligence officials had assured the administration the story was false.

Times executive editor Dean Baquet said at the time that the paper stood by the story.

“The Times had numerous sources confirming this story. Attacking it does not make it less true,” he said.

But Thursday, the paper said it would review the story.

“We are looking into James Comey’s statements, and we will report back with more information as soon as we can,” the Times tweeted.